Que Sera Sera & TF Trade

Placed a stop limit order to buy TF at 448.

If it can't break above resistance at around 444, that's just too bad.

I'm not going to drive myself crazy drawing all kinds of lines and channels anymore. And I most definitely am not going to go for ticks and a few points anymore.

So if it is not strong enough to pierce the ceiling, I'm letting it go. It's not like I absolutely HAVE TO play.

My experience with TF and FX and every instrument I've traded is that the best trades are the ones I paid the least attention to: once I've made up my mind about which way they were going, I placed my bet, my stops and my profit target, and then basically just put them behind me and went about doing something else.

On those occasions that I got stopped out, I barely felt a thing, coz I was fully prepared to part with what I considered merely a cost in doing business in the first place.

If only I will apply that to my life....

Instead, I have let the way I live my life influence the way I trade. I am obsessed with details, and frequently sit for 3 to 6 hours - without so much as getting up to take a sip of water - just analyzing dozens of forex pairs, and up to 7 timeframes for all the major indices and futures that I don't trade. I looked for and experimented with methods that will allow me to get as much as I can from a move and never get shortchanged by a retracement. Even when I have a view of the market in the short, mid and long term, I find myself desperately needing to establish trends in the lowest timeframe. There's hardly a moment during market open that I don't ask myself "so are we up, down or going nowhere now??".

Enough.

Today, I gave myself a break. With all the applications running on my computer, and all the books I wanted to finish sitting right in front of me, I closed my eyes for a good whole hour, in a room that hummed with the queerest sound.

After coming out of my trance, I realized that I've not been ME for a long time.

When was the last time that I was COOL?

How did I end up becoming a nervous wreck?

When did I start giving a damn about details?

When was the last time that I was cold, unaffected and just blatantly obnoxious?

When did I stop being steady and unflustered?

When the light of my life was put out abruptly, I guess.

And I became who I am today - constantly afraid of losing something: love, career, freedom, respect, pride, my sister, my cats, my life, MY MIND.

If I don't get fear out of the way, and if I don't find a way to curb my insane need to have COMPLETE control over everything that's in my life, I'm never going to make it in trading.

I have to stop wanting the very thing that no amount of money can buy. It's as if I've been on a 15-year quest to torture myself so I can numb the pain of having directly and indirectly cost the lives of those supposedly dearest to me.

I am going to have to stop being uncool in my interaction with that special someone. He shall be treated like everyone else in my life - people I am fully prepared to bid farewell to anytime and know that I will not feel an ounce of sadness after they're gone. I cherish my friends for as long as they want to be my friends. But I'll never shed a tear or pester them should they decide they're too good for me. They know that about me and hence never feel pressured to call on me on a regular basis. So why shouldn't he be given the same assurance and peace of mind?

When I can treat him like air - and I'm really starting to notice it's not that difficult - I'll be more hopeful that I'll eventually succeed in finding my edge as a trader.

In life as in trading, I must EMBRACE "que sera sera", NOT condemn it.

TF Trades 12/2

It never fails to amaze me that whenever I am looking for a trade, the trade will end up giving me hours of stress, and that those that I am NOT looking for tend to run into profit zones immediately.

Was looking for a daytrade but needed TF to breakout on the upside of the triangle (see chart below). So I wasn't looking to scalp. But the tape was so predictable today that I couldn't just sit watching.

So, while waiting, I took a few scalps.

TF 5min


Am seeing a bull flag in the making.

Waiting PATIENTLY for a breakout and then a pull-back before placing a long entry.

Am not too hopeful about today's range though...

Anyway, if I can't get a good entry before lunch, I'm turning in.

TF 12/2 - Fib Retracement Level 61.8%

The market is in such a dire state that Briefing no longer knows what to say.

TIME TO BUY!!!! LOL!

Of course it's only prudent to wait for a valid pattern to emerge before one hits the "ask" button.

TF Hourly

What I see:

- Yesterday's 50 over point drop has taken out 60 over percent (ie. ENOUGH!!) of TF's gains accumulated in the past 4.5 sessions

- TF's fallen through support provided by Nov 20's peak, and sitting on my purplish downtrend line

- TF bouncing off the floor of my red descending triangle (I did say "what I see", didn't I? Ok, maybe "imagine" would be a more suitable word...)

- Strong resistance above at 460 - 488

A breakout from the descending triangle and piercing of the resistances provided by the price consolidation area above (460-488) would be needed to confirm trend continuation (ie. UP).

A more likely scenario is that TF would test the 412 low again.

Whether it'll bounce off from there and break out of all the resistances above is anybody's guess.

At this moment, I'm not sensing any bullish bias in the market.

But maybe...just maybe...and I'm REALLY HOPING...that we'll see a breakout on the upside today.

TF Trades 12/1

Stopped out once, stopped out twice.

Loss: 550

So much for today.

BUY again tomorrow!!

TF Trade 11/ 28

As with my FX trade, this was a trade I sat on.

Entered LONG at 437.8 on Nov 26.

I guess I was both tired and fed-up of scurrying in and out of a market that's searching for direction itself.

I took a view that it was going up - even if it's going to turn out to be yet another sucker's rally - and I stayed. Trailing with a 3-point stop now.

Where Are You Going, DOW?

DOW Weekly (Click to enlarge)

What I'm seeing:

- Trendline 1 and 2 NOT breached.

- Trendline 3 NOT breached yet (no closes below that line to date), but more on this below

- Trendline 4 breached in Aug 2001, but DOW resumed its uptrend after retracing slightly more than 50% in the 1st quarter of 2003

- Trendline 5 breached during last week of Sept this year.

BAD NEWS:
Given that what DOW has punched through is a weekly trendline (trendline 5), the likelihood that it's going to continue to fall is high (at least that's what I'm going to assume for now)

Using trendline 5 as the neckline to measure how far DOW will fall, the estimated target is around 5210 [ 9914 - (14,198 - 9494)].

By the time that DOW drops to that level, and closes below that, it would officially have breached trendline 1.... (I'm going to have to stop projecting beyond that before I fall off my chair....)

Consolation:
As DOW has broken out of an Uptrend line, volume after breakout will have to be trending up to support a substantial drop.

The way I see it is that volume is not exactly on an uptrend after breakout. So there's HOPE that things could get better afterall? (With the Fed's money printing machine starting to go in full force again, I'm keeping my hopes HIGH in the short-term...of course that would mean a depreciation of the USD is imminent...which means that I can now SHORT THE USD...which is exactly what I'm doing now anyway)

As it is now, DOW is seen to be testing the high (after breakout) of around 9800...

GOOD NEWS:
Although DOW has breached trendline 5, it's NOT breached trendline 3, and it's not known if we are looking at a trend reversal or merely a correction (to date, DOW has retraced about 50% from beginning of trendline 3) looking at the period spanning 1991 and the present.

In fact, anyone looking to short the market after DOW's breakout from trendline 5 would be wise to wait for DOW to:
a) first test the high (after breakout) of 9655 to 9800, and having tested that,
b) to fall below approx. 7445 (red solid line in chart above)

Personally, unless both conditions a) and b) have been fulfilled, I won't be comfortable taking short positions (except in scalping of course) from this point on, not with trendline 3 apparently providing some sort of support...

Now, the REALLY BAD NEWS:
Should DOW punch through trendline 3, and fulfill the conditions for a trend reversal (points (a) and (b) above shows how I would qualify a confirmed reversal), we'll find DOW all the way down at 1040 (which effectively brings us back to 1983, when DOW first took off from its base and went on a parabolic ascend without looking back even once).

I'm PRAYING for DOW to climb back up to hit at least 9800, and stay up there for a while...if it doesn't, the future's going to be pretty bleak for everyone on planet earth.

FX Trade 11/27

Tired of scalping. Am letting this one run until there's reason for me to change my view wrt where the pair's heading.

Trades on 11/25 were all stopped out at minimum damage to my account. Am starting to accept that getting stopped out doesn't mean I'm a failure. Although it still doesn't feel good, it sure helps to keep my drawdowns small.

FX Trades 11/25

Long: USDJPY, CADJPY, AUDUSD, GBPJPY, GBPUSD

TF & FX Trades 11/ 24 - Update

Exited my TF short positions from yesterday with 3k damage to my account.

FX: exited 4 pairs manually, and was stopped out for the remaining 6 pairs.
Damage: 2000 pips on total of 10k units.

Thick grey lines on charts below roughly show the point of my short entries.

Exited 4 positions at the low of the day before the pairs rallied again. The others (with the exception of USD/JPY) were stopped out slightly above the low.

I'm blaming all my losses from yesterday on:
1) The position of my monitors
2) My restless cats
3) The temperature of my room (so cold it froze my brain)
4) D, for my very bad mood
5) Flu virus, which always attack me on days when I'm in very bad mood

Yes, I'm blaming everything except:
a) My pea size brain
b) My utter reluctance to reassess my view on where the market is heading when my view is apparently flawed
c) My total lack of respect for stop losses
d) My abandoning the method that was perfect for me simply coz by adhering to all the parameters that come with it, I'd be limiting myself to just a few choice setups a day, which means fewer points to earn

No trading today. Switched the position of my monitor and end my 3-week long suffering. What was I thinking when I moved it from my right to my left???

Down with something - haven't quite made out what it is. I'm freezing in a home with the air-conditioning turned off and windows all shut. My head won't stop throbbing, and I'm very very very grouchy.

TF & FX Trades 11/ 24 - Disastrous Open Positions

Totally paying for not letting go of what I shouldn't have owned in the first place!!

But since I own them now, I'm keeping!!

ALL OF THEM!

There's just no cure for stupidity.

FX Trades 11/ 24

Short 10 pairs.

HAPPY!

Positions opened between 2:30am to 3:30am EST.

All there's left to do now is WAIT.

Abomination

As a girl, I grew up beating up boys and detesting them coz I think they are rascals.

As a women, I always end up hating my boyfriends and husbands.

Maybe I hate men in general.

No, correction: I just simply detest them.

They are perpetual liars. The reason they like to say things they don't mean, do things behind your back, don't tell you about the things that bother them is probably because they think all women are idiots.

No, correction: they just think their girlfriends and wives are idiots.

I won't waste an ounce of my energy anymore on the part of my life that's forever filled with deceit, sorrows, regrets, anger and hurt.

I won't spend my life - which could otherwise be productive and meaningful - on a person I would never figure out coz he thinks he is too deep and complex to be understood.

Sheer arrogance.

And I won't have it anymore.

Men can continue to play their games and feel good about it for whatever reason.

Maybe they are programmed to think they know better, and that they are free to break rules and hearts simply because they are superior to the female species.

I shan't destroy my own life getting even anymore.

Ultimately, the men win.

I'll let live.

I have something I can live for now, and I'll be a bona fide idiot to focus on what I can never control, instead of living my life to the fullest with what I've been given - at long last - a passion.

Ready For The Nine-To-Five Grind

I've been thinking about this for quite a while now: going back to full-time work.

The 14-month break has been fulfilling. I totally lived my dream of being a recluse, and confirmed that I can be an island by myself.

I'm now more confident than I ever have been, and know that I'll have no problem being seen eating lunch alone.

Now, the easier part: getting someone to hire me.

Ha.

Haven't a clue where to begin.

As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I know how to ask for a job.

But if I want it badly enough, I will find a way.

TF Trades 11/ 21

Total: +7.6 Points

At a certain point, it becomes difficult to believe that professional bears are selling.

I felt compelled to BUY.

And I kept buying as TF went down as the momentum going down was just not there (ie not like the typical TF plunge).

All there was left to do after that was to sit and WAIT patiently for the bears to be taken out.

The only concern I had was that RUT was diverging negatively from DOW.

So while my initial target was support at 383.7 (5min chart), I got out at 381.8 for my 380.2 contract, when the already slow upward momentum was coming to a halt.

As I'm writing, TF is consolidating below 382.

Looks like a bull flag to me.

But I'm calling it a day.

TF 11/ 21 - STOP PLUNGING, TF!!!

With D's company in the limelight - in a VERY BAD way - I think it's about time I do my part in calling the bottom.

Not going to put up any other charts - the DOW chart alone looks pretty creepy and telling of a market that's going to get severely punished for not having done all the healthy corrections on its way up after it left base in the 1980s.

TF


I'M REALLY HOPING the support at 394 holds today. If it doesn't, there's still HOPE for a double or triple bottom next week.

Ok, traders should never "hope".

Fine.

I was about to "PRAY" instead anyway.

LOL!

FX Trades 11/ 21

Long:
EUR/USD (1000 units)
EUR/JPY (1000 units)
CHF/JPY (1000 units)
NZD/USD (1000 units)
AUD/USD (1000 units)
AUD/JPY (3000 units)
CAD/JPY (2000 units)

Positions opened: 8:15am - 8:35am EST
Positions closed: 12:35pm EST

Charts used: Daily, Hrly, 15-min, 5-min

Total: +990 pips

TF Trades 11/20

Total: +9.1 Points

Starting to see double, and feel like I might just go blind soon.

Can't wait for M's emini futures class to start. Mid Dec seems so far away....I desperately need to pick up a saner way to trade.

Help, M!!!

TF & FX Trades 11/19

Timeframe Traded: 9:45am to 10:08am EST

Total: +6.1 Points

I'M HAPPY!

Totally unlearned everything I knew about scalping/daytrading and did what I never had the nerve to do before. I no longer want to be the scared animal that when out in the open, is constantly looking for the nearest shelter. I want to hunt. Not to be hunted.

And as a hunter, I don't want to go into the jungle with an outdated map. Charts older than today's are simply good for telling me where the market is today in relation to yesterday. Today, I look at everything with fresh eyes. I want to know my terrain, and only use tracks that have been used time and again by others, and I set up my traps along that track.

Then I watch. I take note of how many ticks the market moves up before it comes down for each ascend and vice-versa. I keep a lookout for supports and resistances via the market depth trader and I look for setups that tell me that the bulls are cleaning up the bears and vice-versa at these levels, and when they show up, I get ready to go in for the real breakouts when market retests those levels.

For the first time, I didn't sit on the edge of my chair; there was no cold sweats, racing heart, dry mouth and stiff shoulders. No more getting out with a 3-point loss after missing the best chances to bolt when the market's clearly trading in a range in an unhurried manner. I took the chance to make some trades as price went below where I placed a long entry. It didn't matter that I could only BUY to not offset the first long entry. I made a few ticks here and a few ticks there, leaving only 1 contract outstanding. Then I bought 2 more contracts from the low of the day (at that time) and sold all above the point of my first entry.

Radical approach for me. I wasn't averaging my loss though (not that I think it's a bad strategy - it's really for an experienced trader to assess on a case-by-case basis if that's the way to turn a bad situation around).

I was simply playing along a well-laid track. Where I entered gave me some room to decide if i want to scratch the trade or bail at minimum loss, or wait for it to come back to give me some profits (on hindsight, really a habit I have to kick). I started at the mid-point of the range, and not too far from where my "point of no return" is. Worst case scenario: I bail at a loss that I've set to be the maximum drawdown for today, and that's an amount that allows the market to test the low and come back up. If it doesn't come back, I bail at max pain.

FX
Long:
EUR/USD
EUR/JPY
AUD/USD
EUR/JPY
Positions opened at 12:30am EST
Positions closed at 7:00am EST
Total: + 240 pips

Counting Waves

SPX Daily

No matter how I look at this chart, I just couldn't count that death drop fall as wave 5 without having to break some sacred Elliot Wave rules (e.g. wave 4 not supposed to overlap wave 1, wave 1 must not be longer than wave 3, etc etc).

BUT I DO SO WANT THAT PLUNGE TO BE WAVE 5!!

So, what do I do?

I decided that the shaded area will be wave 1; that dreadful plunge, wave 3.

All EW rules observed.

Phew!

So what becomes of wave 5?

EW practitioners call it a "truncated fifth" (Given that wave 3 is visibly over-extended, what I'm looking at is a totally valid truncated fifth).

And what follows a bear market truncation is .... happy news: A RALLY!! (If you notice that HAMMER from yesterday, that's one reason to believe that bulls will be happy at least for today...and maybe for this entire week....)

I'm not even going to be bothered about confirming that there are 5 subwaves in that wave 5.

I'm just going to say that IT IS WAVE 5.

I mean, why can't I, when a pessimistic EW expert can always claim that that triangle where I've labeled wavee 3,4 and 5 is in fact a wave 4 made up of diagonal triangle, and that what follows is usually a continuation of the previous trend (ie. DOWN!!!)??

And THAT is exactly what they're calling that triangle at the base of a similar plunge on the daily EUR/USD chart!

The beauty of EW, in my opinion, is that you can interpret it in anyway you want and no one can really say that you're wrong, unless you break those ridiculous rules. It's arbitrary, and yet complicated enough so when you make an attempt to explain your reading to a layman, you stand a good chance of sounding REALLY SMART.

Ok, so I USED TO BE fascinated by Elliot Waves.

Truth be told, anything that baffles me has my attention until I can say for sure that the only reason that it had baffled me is that it's pure nonsense to begin with.

It was only recently that I realize that the one and only thing I BUY about the EW principle is this: that you can't use physics to explain the market, and that everything that happens within the market has NIL correlation with things happening beyond it. WE move the market. Events don't.

So out of the many tenets underpinning the Elliot Wave Principle, I find myself agreeing whole-heartedly with just one.

Just so that I can bore myself to sleep when I revisit my postings in the distant future, I'm just going to talk a little about the 2 EW tenets below, one of which is the one I buy, and the other ...well...not entirely...

Tenet 1) Social moods determines the development of events, not the other way round.

A much used example is that of the Enron Scandal.

While most of us, out of sheer forgetfulness, would attribute a bearish market to the unfolding of a string of events closely resembling and following the Enron saga, practitioners of EW principle will tell you that it is the bearish sentiment around the time that the news first broke that precipitated those scandals.

A detailed writeup on how they arrived at that conclusion is available on the EWI website. Get a free membership and download their "Independent Investor eBook".

A more recent example (NOT taken from EWI - though I'm sure they would already have written something on it on their newsletter): the repeated rescue efforts US has taken to save companies deemed too big to fall had seen their major indices making lower lows and nearing the 2002 low.

An EW expert will tell you that it's the REACTION of the market towards these bailouts that has precipitated a market meltdown. THIS I totally agree with.

When sentiments have gotten this bad, it's damn if you do, and damn if you don't for policy makers. I don't want to be in their place.

Tenet 2) Investors that take the contrarian path, one which is almost always against the nature of man, win.

The analogy used in one of the reports found in the Independent Investment ebook is that of someone NOT ducking when a stone is coming at him.

In the investment context, this is analogous to BUYING when everyone is looking to dump what they have.

This kind of activity is definitely not for the faint hearted - which supposedly (according to statistics) represents 90% of investors/traders.

The special breed that dare make such moves are prepared to take the consequences.

The faint-hearted will simply end up losing when they are the ones who are the most afraid to lose.

I have big issue with tenet 2).

I agree with it up to the point where it says that it takes remarkable emotional strength to stick to one's conviction (if that's what the writer is implying).

But I definitely think that to be able to go against the trend outright and make a killing - you need more than courage and foresight.

You need to have a very deep pocket to buy when people are selling, and then sit on your paper loss if your buying doesn't send the market back up immediately.

You either have to be already loaded, or the mettle to take an exceedingly high leverage or borrow from a loan shark to play the market this way. Should luck be on the side of the latter 2, wall street will have yet another rags-to-riches story to use to lure the ignorant into the market. For the one with deeper pockets than the average Joe to start with, if a major market meltdown doesn't kill him and the companies he buys, he's simply going to be an even richer man when the market rebounds.

If someone were to throw a stone at me, and it looks like there's a 70% chance it's going to hit me and a 100% chance that it'll kill me, I duck.

It doesn't take the Elliot Wave Principle to point out the obvious: that to make it in trading and investing, to be well-capitalized is a PRE-REQUISITE.

How and where you get the money is a separate issue altogether.

You MUST HAVE MONEY

Period

Moyo's Article: 800 Support To Hold On The S&P

This is an excellent piece!

I really have to give it to Moyo.

His determination to make each posting informative and educational makes me feel a little guilty for not doing the same with my blog.

That said, I'm most definitely going to continue writing whatever that comes to mind while I still can. That's what novices are entitled to doing. Hur hur...

I'm linking to Moyo's posting coz I share his sentiments. I'm on a head-on collision with some of the best traders of our time (some are on my blogroll), and as frustrating as it can get, I can't help but feel differently from them about how events are going to unfold.

I've been a bear ever since I first knew anything about trading. I have no idea what a bull market is like. I always find Dr Brett's non-psychology postings a struggle to read - all his NYSE lows highs, his charts and almost all the indicators he uses are Greek to me - the only thing that I can read is his tendency to benchmark against a bull market. And it is through that that I get a vague idea of the characteristics of bull markets. And although what I'm seeing today is nothing like that image in my mind, something tells me that I'm a bear that should really start to fatten up and get ready to hibernate.

Which probably explains my moodiness for the past few weeks!

I can no longer ask the market to PLUNGE.

That word has an uplifting effect on me.

I get it - I'm evil.